Aside from balancing... Its often possible to find way better sprites (some of them look quite dated ). For example check out this cool vampire:

This one would make a decent UD leader I would say. If you are interested I can provide some support in sprite discovery process. Also some of the leaders are based on current units (like Elven Lord). Those maybe could eventually receive unique look as well. Such changes could be just a visual replacement (like warlock -> vampire or such), not rly balance related. Well when it comes to sprites there is a lot to choose form in Art Workshop subforum.

Hi guys, just a quick post from the mysterious world of semi-retirement.

I had a small bit of free time today, downloaded this era, and played around with it a bit. I really, really love it.

Some small things that I noticed:

The Elvish Legend is quite godly. Maybe a bit too much?

The Orcish Shaman seems a little weak, and -15% defense is kind of awkward. What do you think about -20%? The definition of "hex" that shows up here also says that it doesn't work on "undeads." It should just be "undead," which is already a plural term. That definition may just come from the outer game though- I'm not sure. Either way....

The Infantry Commander also seems very strong, though I'm not too sure yet.

The "distract" ability says that it doesn't give the equivalent of skirmisher to the leader unit itself, but it actually does.

I'll post more thoughts if I have any more.

I will not tell you my corner / where threads don't get locked because of mostly no reason /
because I don't want your hostile disease / to spread all over the world.
I prefer that corner to remain hidden /
without your noses. -Nosebane, Sorcerer Supreme

Gallifax: agreed neither is good evidence, but a good sign to go with others I think, hopefully we'll have some more tests soon.

I'm actually rather proud of the image set I have for the leaders at the minute, I think they all look rather cool in one way or another. Part of that is a certain amount of nostalgia for some of them though. Anyway, I'm open to any suggestions for sprite replacement at the minute, though I wouldn't want to change the stats unless someone gave me a good argument that their set of stats is better and the stats should match the sprite. In addition, I want to stick to the 3 leader per faction limit at the moment. This gives a good amount of variety, but it gets hard to add more that are both balanced and not feel a bit like copies of some of the others I think.

Regarding the vampire/demon: I think warlock, skeleton, ghost is a good thematic representation of the undead faction, while a vampire doesn't fit so well. On stuff like images though, I'm open to being overruled by the masses.

I'm going to have another look over the leader set before the tournament, I've been told to nerf my mages too. I'll check the Legend again, though I seem to remember nerfing him a bit before. Perhaps ambush should be taken away, I felt it was a cool and not too useful perk but maybe he has too many of those.

Shaman: you're not the first to mention the 15% being unintuitive, I'll probably change it. It's hard to get a read on how powerful he is without playing him a bit I think, it's such a unique ability, I still need to try him more. Not sure how that Undeads got passed me, I seem to remember a rant about such things in a certain Junkyard .

Infantry Commander was ok IIRC, though most of the leaders are obviously quite good compared to normal default ones.

Some replay on my latest freelands( corrected an error), its not alternate era. But I am posting it here cause I think its not too bad example as ro why I think Undead do not need that much of help vs Elves. Even though I dont mind that little boost you gave them.

Certainly he made errors, but so did I or lets call ot risky choices. I think the main issue in this game was rather double hitting woses than op woses.

But maybe tell me your opinion on that match,might be totally different after all:)

Yeah, I actually don't think UD need too much help there either. In particular I think putting adepts at a level where they can 4/4 a wose at night might be too much. Woses are very slow and expensive already, it isn't too hard to retreat from them at day and catch them at night. As you said your opponent did make a few mistakes, in particular he seemed very averse to mages even though you were fairly ghost heavy.

I've just finished some changes to the leaders on alternate era. I'll release this for the tournament when I've added the khalifate also. Most of the reasoning for the changes comes from a discussion with ps7 about how the magic/marksman leaders were a bit too good, this also made me think about the rounding of attacks when modified by resistances a lot more. Anyhow, here's the changes:

two replays for you to analyse. one was ud vs loys, where i saw no major problems. the other was dwarves vs drakes and to be honest, the drake leader seems a bit plain to me in contrast to all the other leaders. is it possible to give him an edge somewhere, somewhat? especiallyi n terms of attacking. its no use having fansastic 5 strikes but the unit sits on 70% and is hit maybe once, maybe twice. or maybe im wrong, you decide.